/lit/ - Literature

Did this guy have any ideas of his own or was he just Socrates' penman?

Let me explain why I'd recommend this book to everyone: Plato is stupid.

Seriously.

And it's important that you all understand that Western society is based on the fallacy-ridden ramblings of an idiot. Read this, understand that he is not joking, and understand that Plato is well and truly fucked in the head.

Every single one of his works goes like this:

SOCRATES: "Hello, I will now prove this theory!"
STRAWMAN: "Surely you are wrong!"
SOCRATES: "Nonsense. Listen, Strawman: can we agree to the following wildly presumptive statement that is at the core of my argument?" {Insert wildly presumptive statement here— this time, it's "There is such a thing as Perfect Justice" and "There is such a thing as Perfect Beauty", among others.}
STRAWMAN: "Yes, of course, that is obvious."
SOCRATES: "Good! Now that we have conveniently skipped over all of the logically-necessary debate, because my off-the-wall crazy ideas surely wouldn't stand up to any real scrutiny, let me tell you an intolerably long hypothetical story."
{Insert intolerably long hypothetical story.}
STRAWMAN: "My God, Socrates! You have completely won me over! That is brilliant! Your woefully simplistic theories should become the basis for future Western civilization! That would be great!"
SOCRATES: "Ha ha! My simple rhetorical device has duped them all! I will now go celebrate by drinking hemlock and scoring a cameo in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure!"

The moral of the story is: Plato is stupid.

I'm currently reading Plato's Republic - I'm halfway through the argument with Thrasymachus - and I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to read this book. I am just reading it as I would a normal book, seeing what Plato says in response to things, but I'm not analysing them or seeing if they're true.

Another problem is that the commentary in the book says that certain arguments are bad - the argument I'm reading has been described as 'embarrassingly bad' but I'm not sure why, or whether I should skip it; am I supposed go figure out the problems myself? How can I when I can hardly understand what they're talking about because I've never thought about it myself?